


A Julian by any other name

by Khalehla



Series: If you are the one [2]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Crack, Game Shows, Humor, Implied M/M/M, M/M, dating game, this is not a shipping war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-11-16 17:59:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11258028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khalehla/pseuds/Khalehla
Summary: After seeing Marco's success in finding True Love™, Julian decides to give this Dating Game show thing a try.Sequel toThe path of true love (apparently), where the saying "all's fair in love and war" has never been truer.





	A Julian by any other name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yyydelilah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yyydelilah/gifts).



> ... I don't know if I'm being too subtle with this, but enjoy anyways :)
> 
>  
> 
> Again, not to be taken seriously. Also, there really are too many Julians in the Germany NT!

Somewhere in Germany an abandoned warehouse is once again being used for non-nefarious purposes, but rather In The Name Of True Love™. And once again, the person operating the fog machine hasn’t figured out how to control how much fog is being pumped out, because when the two hosts come out on stage, you can only see their faces when they’re practically at the edge of the stage. Luckily, the two hosts are familiar, and once they’re recognisable, someone from the audience yells out, “I love you, Luki!”

Lukas blows a kiss and grins. “I love you too!”

“We are BACK!” Thomas announces flamboyantly.

“And you know what this means, right?” Lukas adds.

“It means that we’ve managed to convince someone who is Desperately Single™ that the only way the can find love is by joining our dating show!”

The audience roars its approval.

“Time for us to introduce our Desperately Single™ for the night. Everyone, give it up for-”

“JULIAN DRAXLER!”

The audience goes wild as the winger comes out in the dense fog and disco lights, waving at everyone before taking his seat on his own podium.

“Julian, hello,” Thomas greets him warmly. “You’re looking very pretty today.”

Julian rolls his eyes at but is grinning broadly. “You’re such a flatterer, Mülli. But we all know you never really mean it.”

“Excuse you, I am very sincere in my compliments,” Thomas protests lightly.

“And he’s not wrong,” Lukas adds. “You do look very nice tonight, Jule; although I think even if you showed up in a potato sack you’d be okay. I mean, our four contestants are very keen to get a date with you, after all.”

Julian shrugs, but is blushing lightly. “It doesn’t hurt to look my best.”

“Should we take that to mean that you're ready for our mystery contestants to come out?”

“Yes. Yes, I think I’m ready.”

“Well then, let’s get started, shall we?”

Thomas points dramatically at the stage. “Let’s welcome our prospective dates.”

“Joshua Kimmich!” Lukas yells out.

“Kevin Volland!”

“Matthias Ginter!”

“And Erik Durm!”

“Let’s give them some LOVE!” the hosts yell together.

The audience stamp their feet and whistle loudly because they’ve finally figured out that they’re supposed to cheer as loud as they can whenever the hosts yell something out.

Four men come out on stage and take their seats on the stools centre stage.

“Welcome gentlemen!” Thomas greets. “You all know why you are here, and I must say that you’re all very brave for being here!”

“But then I guess it takes a courage to step out to find True Love™,” Lukas adds.

All the contestants nod. Joshua clutches a box to himself more tightly.

“Well then if there aren’t any questions from the contestants-”

“-and because we only have this place for a short amount of time-”

“-let’s get this show on the road!”

The audience lets out an enormous roar.

“Okay first up today is one of Germany’s brightest rising stars,” Thomas introduces contestant number one. “And I see that he’s brought something for us today. Jo, care to show us what that is?”

Joshua lifts the box in his hand. “It’s my memory box.”

“Awww,” Lukas coos. “Of you and Jule? Can we see some?”

Joshua nods shyly, then takes one of the photos out. “This is us when we first played together in youth - one of the key moments of my life.”

When the camera zooms in onto the photo, everyone _awww_ s at the chubby cheeks; but Lukas and Thomas just look confused.

“You guys look so young and adorable there,” Lukas says, “but Jo, I’m not sure if that’s the right photo of Julian-”

“It is!” Joshua interrupts, nodding earnestly. He then pulls out another photo. “It probably doesn’t look like us much anymore because we were so young but this is a more recent one of us at out our first senior tournament - in France - and as you can see we’ve been growing through youth together and are still very close.”

“That’s lovely to hear,” Thomas nods, “we all love a story of childhood sweethearts but-”

“I know right?” Joshua interrupts again, getting even more excited. “But wait, I’ve got even better ones!”

“Joshua, buddy-”

“Hold up, it’s here somewhere.” The next picture shows Julian with a fresh baby face and light blue jersey. “And you know I don’t even care that he used to play for 1860. That’s true love, right?”

“Yes it is, but Jo-”

“I mean, they’re Bayern’s arch enemy and we all hate them but I can’t hate Ju because he’s just too special to me.”

“And that’s incredibly sweet-”

“Not just sweet but true love because only real love would-”

“JOSHUA!”

Joshua finally stops his gushing and looks at Thomas with wide eyes. “Yes?”

“I’m not sure if you noticed, but we’re here for Julian _Draxler_ , not Weigl.”

Joshua blinks, turns to stare at the podium where Julian Draxler waves at him, then blinks some more. “Oh.”

“I guess we should be good hosts and ask if you still want to be here?” Lukas asks kindly.

Joshua blinks for another few seconds, then packs his box of photos up. “Sorry Jule,” he says almost apologetically to the podium. “Wrong Julian.”

“That’s okay!” Julian Draxler says cheerfully. “See you at the next IB!”

Thomas and Lukas watch Joshua walk down the stairs and towards the back exit with fond expressions on their faces.

“So cute,” Lukas murmurs.

“Right?” Thomas agrees. “So I guess we should move on then?”

“Good idea.” Lukas turns back to the remaining contestants, and blinks in confusion because there’s now two empty stools. “Where’s Kev?”

Matze and Erik point to the side.

“Kevin, wait!” Thomas calls out to him. “Kevin! Kevin, where are you going?”

Kevin doesn’t slow, just waves and calls back, “wrong Julian”. He’s around the corner and out of sight a second later.

“Uh…” Thomas says to Lukas.

Lukas shrugs. “Well, that’s certainly makes the odds better for our last two contestants.”

Erik and Matze are both sitting there seemingly uncaring that it’s now a deathmatch between the two of them.

“Okay, so now that we’re down to two, let’s-.” Lukas stops abruptly, then places a finger to his ear. Thomas is doing the same; they are obviously getting instructions in their ear piece.

“So it looks like we are down to three, not two,” Thomas says after a few seconds.

Lukas nods. “That’s right! We may have lost one Kevin, but don’t worry, we’ve got another one waiting in the wings to take his place - isn’t that amazing?”

The audience cheers in agreement.

“Without further ado then, let’s call out our surprise replacement contestant!” The hosts turn to the stage, fog is pumped out from the back door, and and upbeat music plays loudly. “Let’s call out, KEVIN TRAPP!”

A lightly bearded brunet walks shyly out in the cloud of fog and takes his place on the stool that the first Kevin abandoned. He waves up at the podium.

"Je savais pas que tu serais là ce soir!" Julian calls out.

Kevin grins. "L'autre Kevin m'a devancé du coin, mais comme il vient de partir..."

"Bon ça me fait plaisir de te voir!"

"Oui, ça me fait plaisir aussi!"

“Aww look at that,” Thomas practically gushes.  “I have absolutely no idea what they just talked about but that sounded intimate and kinda hot.”

“Perhaps an indication of how this night is going to go?” Lukas suggests. “Kevin, would you like to start? You look like you’ve got a handle on this already.”

Kevin preens, then makes the mistake of turning to the other two contestants.

Matze and Erik do not look pleased. In fact, they look like if Kevin so much as twitches his eyebrows wrong then they’d take it as invitation to do painful things to him.

Kevin gulps nervously. “Uh, yes. Hello everyone. I’m Kevin hehe; I guess you already knew that and I’m here because I… well, I-”

Kevin once again makes the mistake of glancing at his fellow contestants and must have realised that his presence on the game show was unwelcome. Very unwelcome. He gulps. “I’m here to um, just say hello actually…”

“Well hello,” Matze says in a surprisingly neutral voice. The intensity of his glare hasn’t gone down though.

“And I wasn’t going to stay?” Kevin adds tentatively.

“Aww you’re going to miss out on the fun,” Erik says with only a hint of sarcasm.

“It’s okay, maybe next time!”

Kevin gets off his stool and very very slowly backs away from the stage; when he’s close enough to the exit, he calls out “BYE!” to everyone then runs out.

“That was strange,” Thomas says to Lukas.

Lukas shrugs. “This whole game show has been strange, and we’ve only had two episodes so far.”

“I know,” Thomas agrees. “Well back to the game I guess.”

“So, Erik, Matze, there really is only two of you left; who wants to go first?”

“Oh it won’t be a problem,” Erik waves his hand in the air. “We’ve got it all sorted already.”

“You do?” Thomas asks in surprise.

“Yeah,” Matze agrees, “we’re just gonna take Jule home with us.”

“Us?” Lukas repeats, looking unsure between the two contestants on the stage and Julian up on the podium. “You mean “us” as in, you and Erik? Together?”

Erik and Matze nod.

“You’re taking Jule home with you. Together?” Lukas asks again, just to be sure,

Erik and Matze nod some more.

“Okay,” Thomas says slowly before turning to the podium. “And how do you feel about that, Jule?”

Julian shrugs lazily. “Sure, why not? The more the merrier, right?”

The forward turns to the last remaining contestants and grins wolfishly. The answering grin from both Erik and Matze is just as lascivious.

“Oh. Kay,” Thomas says, nudging his co-host. “I think that’s our cue to wrap things up.”

“You’re right,” Lukas agrees. “Another wonderful lesson we learnt in this episode of If You Are The One.”

“And what’s that lesson, Lukas?”

“That even in a game show, everyone can be a winner!”

“That is very true,” Thomas nods. “Especially because we haven’t been raided by the police yet - let’s keep our track record good, yes?”

“Of course! Without further ado, we’re going to wish everyone a good night, and we’ll see you next time on-”

“IF YOU ARE THE ONE!”

 

**Author's Note:**

> A huge huge thank you to the awesome [mrhugolloris](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ahbonilnapasdeprenom/pseuds/mrhugolloris) for providing the French for me!
> 
> [“I didn’t know you were going to be here tonight!”] _"Je savais pas que tu serais là ce soir!"_  
>  [“The other Kevin beat me to the spot, but since he’s just left…”] _"L'autre Kevin m'a devancé du coin, mais comme il vient de partir..."_  
>  [“Well it’s good to see you!”] _"Bon ça me fait plaisir de te voir!"_  
>  [“Yeah! It’s good to see you too.”] _"Oui, ça me fait plaisir aussi!"_
> 
>  --  
> I have a [tumblr account ](https://khalehla.tumblr.com) for my writings and random ficlets. If you have a question about this or any of my other stories, come say hi :)
> 
> Disclaimer: I write **fiction** about real people. As far as I know, none of these events ever happened; any resemblance to any actual events are purely coincidental.


End file.
